As the nights grow longer and the turtle doves start to coo, we may all want to wrap up in something (or someone) cosy and warm.
After all, tis the season to hold your loved ones close, or at the very least vent about them in the next room. Or maybe the Christmas office party is the night you finally make a move on your attractive colleague?
Whatever the reason, the festive season is a time for love, so what better time to share some quips and quotations on the topic, taken from a newly published compilation…
WEDDED BLISS
‘They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.’
– Playwright David Mamet
‘Every woman should marry an archaeologist because she grows increasingly attractive to him as he grows increasingly to resemble a ruin.’
– Agatha Christie
Translation is like a woman.
If it is beautiful, it is not faithful.
If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.
– Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko
‘Last year my wife ran off with the fellow next door and, I must admit, I still miss him.’
– Les Dawson
Comedian Les Dawson was known for his deadpan style and musical routines about his mother-in-law and wife
‘There are a few species where the male stays faithful until he dies – but mostly as a result of being eaten by his partner after mating.’
– Kathy Lette
‘When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge’than to let him keep her.’
– French actor Sacha Guitry
‘My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.’
– American comedian Rodney Dangerfield
‘A bride’s attitude towards her betrothed can be summed up in three words: Aisle. Altar. Hymn.’
– Frank Muir
‘My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me.’
– Winston Churchill
‘Many a man owes his success to his first wife, and his second wife to his success.’
– US actor Jim Backus
‘The secret to a happy marriage is bed springs creaking from laughter, not sex.’
– Jilly Cooper
‘Every woman should have four pets in her life: a mink in her closet, a Jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed and a jackass to pay for everything.’
– Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton poses at the 2025 LACMA Art+Film Gala on November 1, 2025
‘Marriage is the only crime where two rites make a wrong.’
– Bob Hope
‘Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.’
– Zsa Zsa Gabor
‘I don’t think I’ll get married again. I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.’
– American humorist Lewis Grizzard
TRUE LUST
‘Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is, we’ll find it.’
– American wit Sam Levenson
‘A hard man is good to find.’
– Mae West
‘Mama told me, be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a mistress in the bedroom. But I hire someone to be a maid and someone to cook so I can take care of the rest.’
– Jerry Hall
American model and actress Jerry Hall attends London Fashion Week on September 21, 2025
Breathless, we flung us
on a windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.’
– Poet Rupert Brooke, The Hill
‘There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.’
– American writer PJ O’Rourke
‘When women go wrong, men go right after them.’
– Mae West
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck
to get
One perfect rose.
– Dorothy Parker, One Perfect Rose
‘Men love with their eyes; women love with their ears’
– Zsa Zsa Gabor
Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor wearing vulture feathers and $600,000 worth of jewelry for a Dune’s Club appearance in Las Vegas, Nevada 1961
When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope
has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with
nothing on.
-Adrian Mitchell, Celia, Celia
‘It’s better to be looked over than overlooked.’
– Mae West
Mark but this flea, and
mark in this,
How little that which
thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and
now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that
this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before
it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made
of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
– John Donne, The Flea
‘I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.’
– Steve Martin
Steve Martin speaks onstage at the 92nd Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre on February 9, 2020
‘The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they are attractive it will upset my players and if they’re not it will upset me.’
– Thomas Beecham
Licence my roving hands, and
let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my
new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d.
– John Donne, To His Mistress Going To Bed
GETTING OVER THEM
1. Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2. The easy way: get to know him better.
– Wendy Cope, Two Cures For Love
‘It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.’
– Dorothy Parker
‘I can’t think of any sorrow in the world that a hot bath wouldn’t help, just a little bit.’
– American writer Susan Glaspell
Ah, clear they see and true
they say
That one shall weep, and one
shall stray.
– Dorothy Parker
WHEN THE GOING’S GOOD
‘The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.’
– Victor Hugo
‘When you’re in love it’s the most glorious two and a half days of your life.’
– American comedian Richard Lewis
‘The magic of our first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.’
– Benjamin Disraeli
‘I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, till I find you again, I’ll be looking for you every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart.’
– Philip Pullman, Lyra to Will in The Amber Spyglass
‘In Hollywood a marriage is considered a success if it outlasts milk.’
– Rita Rudner
‘Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.’
– WH Auden
At lunchtime I bought a
huge orange –
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave
They got quarters and
I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping.
A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
– Wendy Cope, The Orange
‘Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.’
– French author François de la Rochefoucauld
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives
its ease,
And builds a Heaven in
Hell’s despair.
– William Blake, The Clod And The Pebble
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love…
Shakespeare,
Hamlet
Wine comes in at
the mouth
And love comes in
at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow
old and die.
I lift the glass to
my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
– WB Yeats, A Drinking Song
‘Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.’
– Bertrand Russell
I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
– WH Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening
‘I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.’
– Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
THIS HAPPY BREED
‘What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the 20th Century.
‘Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state – in short, did nearly everything right – and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure.
‘The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things – to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.’
– Bill Bryson, From Notes From A Small Island
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
‘Do you know what love is?
‘I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.’
– John le Carré, The Looking Glass War
‘Four be the things I’d be better without: Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.’
– Dorothy Parker
‘The perfect love affair is one conducted entirely by post.’
– George Bernard Shaw
‘You can lead a whore to culture, but you cannot make her think.’
– Dorothy Parker
‘I wonder how girls manage to fall in love. It is easy to make them do it in books. But men are too ridiculous.’
– George Eliot
By the time you swear you’re his, Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is Infinite, undying –
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
– Dorothy Parker, Unfortunate Coincidence
‘Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.’
– Poet Joseph Addison
Taken from The Knowledge Book Of Love etc. edited by Jon Connell and published by Connell Publishing, priced £12.99.
To order a copy for £11.69 (offer valid to December 27; UK p&p free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.